Weekly mail timing/content suggestions & thoughts

[Mr. X]

I don't know about others but Monday is almost always a busy (& high traffic) day. I find it rather disheartening the get a mail box full of Deeperblue update notices. I'm thinking of turning them off (having switched from instant, to daily & now weekly reminders).

However, a couple of alternatives occurred to me:
- How about delivering them late Friday or early Saturday (rather than on busy work day Monday)?
- How about delivering a single mail with a list of links to the updated threads, rather than a mail for each thread.

Also a question: why are the instant & daily reminders "content-free" while the weekly reminders include copies of all the posts? Wouldn't it be better not to include posts, make it optional or inc. them on the more frequent instant and/or daily reminders rather than the weekly reminders (where the list can be quite long).

[trux]

I am not sure what settings are available for achieving what you are asking, but personally do not use any email notifications from DB at all (except for PM). My mailbox is already full enough, and since I come to DB regularly, there is no need to get the notifications.

All you need to so is bookmarking your User CP page, and then opening it whenever it suit you (regardless if it is Friday, Monday, or every 5 minutes). All subscribed threads that have new posts are listed there, and you can read through them before going to the "New Posts" or the home forum page.

On the User CP page you can also easily remove threads from your subscriptions (click "unsubscribe" under the thread name). And of course you can add more threads or subforums to your subscriptions too without posting to them.

I think the email notification is only interesting to those who post very little and do no come to DB unless they get a notification about someone posting in one of their threads.

Yet another possibility is using RSS reader, and subscribing to the RSS feed - you can then configure the reader on your side in any way you want yourself.

That told, it does not mean your suggestions are not interesting. But in case they are difficult to do for Papa Smurf, you have this alternative way to stay up-to-date with DB.

[Stephan Whelan]

Keep suggestions coming - i'm compiling a list but won't be applying any changes till after version 3.7.0 is released which is this week or next.

[Mr. X]

Thanks Trux & Stephan, you're right I should open the forum at my control panel - as I check the forum frequently - and just disable thread mail. Currently, I tend to open it at the top-level forum level or launch directly into a thread from email.

I'm not sure if automatic thread subscription is good -- it seems to occur if you just read a thread (is that correct?); not so good if you realise the thread isn't what you were looking for. Automatic subscription combined with the automatic mail notifications are what drew me into this forum initially & is probably the main way of getting new users "hooked" (sounds dodgy when expressed like that) so it is probably quite good/important for DeeperBlue & new members. Perhaps an easy to see & press "Subscribe to Thread" button might work better for established users?

[trux]

No, automatic subscription adds a thread to your account when you post to the thread. You can subscribe manually without posting though too. And yes, a better visible subscribe button would not be bad, but I am afraid Stephan can do little about it.